Transition to ELF, GCC 2.7.x

[Gleb Arshinov <glebster@apollo0.Stanford.EDU>]

Hello, everybody

I've been using Linux for a while, installing several Slackware
distributions from 2.1 to 2.3.  I learned about Debian only recently and
since I need to reinstall my Linux anyway I considering switching.  There
are several significant advantages that I personally consider very
important for me in Debian vs other distributions:  no need to reinstall
everything from scratch when a new distribution comes out, a group of
maintainers vs a single person, available bug list, dedicated mailing
lists, etc.
  However, considering Linux's transition to ELF I have the
following question: when/if Debian is changing to ELF, what version of GCC
is ELF system going to use (Slackware beta uses 2.6.3 because of Fortran
support), and most importantly will the "no need to reinstall from
scratch" be applicable to ELF change?

Gleb